#46 ‘It Happened One Night’
Class, Control, and a Lesson in Being Tamed by a Man With a Bus Ticket
It Happened One Night (1934) is often celebrated as the first true screwball comedy—the film that made banter sexy, launched a thousand rom-com clichés, and made walls of Jericho out of bedspreads and repressed desire. But peel back the charm, and what you really get is a Depression-era etiquette manual for rich women on how to become more likable by shutting up, eating carrots, and letting a down-on-his-luck reporter run your life.
Claudette Colbert plays Ellie Andrews, a spoiled heiress who leaps off a yacht to escape her controlling father and marry a man he disapproves of. Enter Clark Gable as Peter Warne, a journalist with a hangover, a chip on his shoulder, and the firm belief that all a high-maintenance woman needs is a man to yell directions at her until she says thank you.
The plot? A cross-country journey where he teaches her how to dunk doughnuts and carry luggage, and she teaches him… well, nothing. Ellie is humiliated, patronized, and slowly ground down from sharp-tongued socialite to manageable love interest. And the film frames all of this as progress. A romance, even.
Their chemistry crackles, yes—but that’s because Colbert and Gable are working overtime to make this emotional hostage situation look cute. Peter steals her clothes, threatens to spank her (oh yes), and moralizes constantly about her “kind.” But don’t worry, he’s broke and handsome, so it’s framed as roguish charm instead of straight-up bullying.
The real transformation isn’t romantic, it’s ideological. Ellie begins the film as independent, entitled, and expressive. By the end, she’s been converted into the ideal Depression-era woman: modest, grateful, and ready to elope with a man who spent the entire film negging her into submission. Her reward for leaving behind wealth, security, and autonomy? A motel room and a man with a typewriter.
And let’s not forget the class politics. This is a film obsessed with the nobility of the working man and the frivolity of the rich—so naturally, the only way for Ellie to earn the audience’s sympathy is to be repeatedly humbled. She’s stripped of her privilege (literally), mocked for her ignorance, and ultimately redeemed only by accepting the gospel of manly common sense delivered by a guy who can’t even keep his job.
Yes, the dialogue is clever. Yes, the performances are iconic. Yes, it invented the modern romantic comedy. But It Happened One Night is less a love story than a domestication narrative wrapped in bus tickets and double entendres. It doesn't ask how two people can change together. It asks how a difficult woman can be rebranded into a desirable one—preferably by a man who knows how to hitchhike and say “shut up” with a smile.
3 out of 5 soggy carrots
(One for the sparkling script. One for Colbert’s luminous rebellion. One for the way Gable eats scenery like it’s part of the meal plan. The missing stars were last seen hiding behind the blanket of faux-equality, waiting for a rewrite where Ellie doesn’t have to be broken in to be loved.)
